The Abominations of Modern Society eBook

my business!” They will come cross and befogged
to the store and bank, and ever and anon neglect some
duty, and after a while will be dismissed: and
then, with nothing to do, will rise in the morning
at ten o’clock, cursing the servant because
the breakfast is cold, and then go down town and stand
on the steps of a fashionable hotel, and criticise
the passers-by. While the young man who was a
clerk in a cellar has come up to be the first clerk,
and he who a few years ago ran errands for the bank
has got to be cashier, and thousands of other young
men of the city have gone up to higher and more responsible
positions, he has been going down, until there he passes
through the street with bloated lip, and bloodshot
eye, and staggering step, and hat mud-spattered and
set sidewise on a shock of greasy hair, the ashes
of his cigar dashed upon his cravat. Here he goes!
Look at him, all ye pure-hearted young men, and see
the work of the fashionable club-room. I knew
one such who, after the contaminations of his club-house,
leaped out of the third-story window to put an end
to his wretchedness.

Many who would not be seen drinking at the bar of
a restaurant, think there is no dishonor and no peril
connected with sitting down at a marble stand in an
elegantly furnished parlor, to which they go with a
private key, and where none are present except gentlemen
as elegant as themselves. Everything so chaste
in the surroundings! Soft carpets, beautiful
pictures, cut glass, Italian top tables, frescoed walls.
In just such places there are thousands of young men,
middle-aged men, and old men, preparing themselves
for overthrow.

In many of these club-rooms the talk is not as pure
and elevated as it might be. How is it, men and
brothers, at half-past eleven o’clock, when
the tankards are well emptied, and the smoke curls
up from every lip? Do they ever swear? Are
there stories told unworthy a man who venerates the
name of his mother? Does God, whose presence cannot
be hindered by bolt, and who comes in without a pass-word,
and is making up His record for the judgment-day,
approve of the blasphemies you utter?

You think that there is no special danger, yet acknowledge
that you have felt queer sometimes. Your
head was not right, and your stomach was disturbed.
I will tell you what was the matter. You were drunk.
You understood not that protracted hiccough; it was
the drunkard’s hiccough. You could not
explain that nausea; it was the drunkard’s vomit.
The fact is that some of you, who have never in your
own eyes or in the eyes of others fully sacrificed
your respectability, have for six months been written
down in God’s book as drunkards.

How far down need a man go before he becomes an inebriate?
Must he fall into the ditch? No! Must he
get into a porter-house fight? No! Must
he be senseless in the street? Must he have the
delirium tremens? No! He may wear satin
and fine linen; he may walk with hat scrupulously
brushed; may swing a gold-headed cane, and step in
boots of French leather, dismount from a carriage,
or draw tight rein over a swift, sleek, high-mettled,
full-blooded Arabian span, but yet be so thoroughly
under the power of strong drink that he is utterly
offensive to his Maker and rotten as a heap of compost.